


Racket Boys

by stereonightss



Series: Racket Boys [1]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Bruce Springsteen References, Found Family, Gen, Modern AU, Queerplatonic love, Ships if you squint, boardwalk setting, no gundams AU, noir/crime, the boys are all right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28576314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereonightss/pseuds/stereonightss
Summary: written for the Gundam Wing Rhythm Generation: Shooting Stars 25th Anniversary Zine.-“Lena, did you see the paper today?”Relena settles the phone against her shoulder and fumbles through the stacks of papers on her desk.“I’m looking, I—do you mean the Times or the local?” Relena says, tossing aside her Wall Street Journals and last week’s dog-eared Economist.“The Times,” Hilde says, sounding almost desperate now.Relena finds it under an open volume of Dickens’ Bleak House, and she nearly drops the phone when she sees the picture that sits beneath the day’s best worst news.“It’s my little cousin,” Hilde says, voice breaking. “It wasn’t them, Lena, I just know it wasn’t.”Relena runs her fingers across the headline and down the candid shot beneath.‘Fatal Five Arrested - Teens Taken In for Boardwalk Bomb.’“Hilde, this is awful,” Relena says.“They can’t afford a lawyer, Lena,” Hilde says. “The city’s gonna give them some schmuck who’s gonna ruin their lives even more than they’re already ruined, I mean. They’re good kids. I just know they didn’t do this.”-a tale of redemption for five young boys caught up in a bad scene
Series: Racket Boys [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2093805
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	Racket Boys

_The Night Before Christmas Eve, 1989 - Atlantic City_

“ _It’s good to hear your voice,”_ Hilde says through the phone, as though she’s reading Relena’s mind.

Her voice is the same as it was when they were in high school, tomboy-rough and round like an apple is round—inviting and with a hint of challenge. The usual note of cheer is gone, and in its place is something more like tired. Even after all these years, Relena knows something isn’t quite right.

“ _Lena, did you see the paper today?_ ”

Relena settles the phone against her shoulder and fumbles through the stacks of papers on her desk.

“I’m looking, I—do you mean the Times or the local?” Relena says, tossing aside her Wall Street Journals and last week’s dog-eared Economist.

“ _The Times,”_ Hilde says, sounding almost desperate now.

Relena finds it under an open volume of Dickens’ _Bleak House_ , and she nearly drops the phone when she sees the picture that sits beneath the day’s best worst news. 

“ _It’s my little cousin,”_ Hilde says, voice breaking. “ _It wasn’t them, Lena, I just know it wasn’t.”_

Relena runs her fingers across the headline and down the candid shot beneath.

_‘Fatal Five Arrested - Teens Taken In for Boardwalk Bomb.’_

_“_ Hilde, this is awful,” Relena says.

“ _They can’t afford a lawyer, Lena,”_ Hilde says. “ _The city’s gonna give them some schmuck who’s gonna ruin their lives even more than they’re already ruined, I mean. They’re good kids. I just know they didn’t do this.”_

The eyes on the page stare up at her, hollow and grayer in newsprint than they are in real life. She was seventeen when she saw them—and the boy, he must have been eight, maybe nine. Hard to tell age with the kids in the foster home Hilde’s aunt ran, all of them scrawny and wild-eyed wearing ill-fitting clothes. But the sad blue eyes of the slip of a boy that they found sprawled out on the dune by the boardwalk had haunted her for years. No child should have eyes that knowing, that icy with pain. 

It’s the same eyes on the teen being shoved into a squad car next to Hilde’s cousin Duo, some eerie compromise between lifeless and feral. The look of knowing is more threatening on a teenager’s face, on a teenager’s nearly full-grown body. It isn’t hard to imagine they’re the eyes of a killer—and yet.

“I’ll take the case,” Relena says. 

“ _They can’t afford you, except for the Winner kid, they can’t even afford bail.”_

 _“_ Pro bono. Hilde. Let me help you. I,” Relena shifts the phone to her other shoulder and brings the picture closer. “I want to help them.”

“ _Thank you. Thank you, Lena, thank—“_

Hilde’s voice trips out into hiccoughing sobs. Relena creases the newsprint with her manicured nails and tears the photo out, careful to exclude the headline. 

*

_Easter, 1990_

Duo’s the first to wake, as usual. Since the incident, he wakes in jolts with the ghost of flames licking at his ears. It used to be so easy, to fall asleep, to stay asleep, even when he was sleeping on the streets. Out enough to rest while the dark animal in the back of his mind kept an ear out for danger. Now, all he can hear as he drifts off is a chorus of screams and the grim chime of breaking glass.

He slips off his cot and weaves between the backpacks and stacks of books and the cots the other four sleep on. It’s dark yet, just a faint glow through the small attic window, the same predawn violet as his eyes. 

He changes in the familiar cramp of the attic, donning the same black jeans and turtleneck he’s been wearing for days. _If I’m gonna be a god of death, I’m gonna look the part,_ he thinks to himself. He’s no stranger to looks of pity or scorn—none of them are, having grown up on the wrong side of town. But since the incident, since their arrest, it’s as though most people can barely stand to look at them. 

Duo smiles. It hurts. But it makes him feel like a god, too, their fear. Their scorn.

Dressed now, he descends the stairs, quiet as a thief, and swipes Hilde’s comb from the bathroom. 

He puts on the kettle and hefts himself up on the counter so he can siphon some of the heat from the stove. His fingers are stiff with cold and shivering as he undoes the very end of his braid. The little house is drafty, and Hilde keeps the heat low, because there isn’t much money in the off season of their little beach town. She does her best, but it’s a tight thing, feeding five boys on a civil servant’s budget. And no one for miles and miles will hire the boys, not after finding out who they are.

“You shouldn’t do that by the stove.”

Like a djinn summoned by the promise of coffee, Quatre appears in the doorway. 

“Jesus, man, you scared the crap out of me,” Duo says.

“Come here. You’ll light your hair on fire,” Quatre says gently, but there’s a smile in his sleep-heavy eyes as he watches Duo untangle his long brown hair.

“My house, my rules, man,” Duo says, pouting. But one look at Quatre’s sky-blue eyes and he realizes the need beneath the concern. Remembers that he’s not the only one having nightmares. He hops down and pads over to the worn kitchen table and its mismatched chairs. He drops himself in one and props his feet up on another.

“C’mon,” Duo mumbles. “If you’re gonna do the thing, then do it.”

Quatre steps up behind him, both of them quiet and still and prickling with nervous energy, afraid to break the magic of this fragile routine. Quatre pulls on the long wefts of hair with a quivering tenderness, teasing out knots with his slim fingers, smoothing down kinks until the thick mass of it falls in a smooth curtain over the back of the chair.

Trowa comes down just as the kettle starts to whine, somber and soundless. He fills a french press with coffee grounds and slips teabags into two chipped mugs, then portions out the water. 

By the time Heero comes down, Quatre’s tying up the end of Duo’s neat new braid, and Trowa is setting cups and a carton of cream beside them. Heero takes his tea and claims the seat next to Duo, and the three of them watch with fond disgust as Duo puts spoon after spoon after spoon of sugar into his coffee. 

“I’m hungry,” Wu-Fei says as he enters the kitchen. He flips open each cabinet in turn. “And we’re out of groceries.”

“You’re tea’s on the counter,” Quatre says.

“Food pantry doesn’t open till noon,” Heero says.

“I could go to the seven eleven and—“ Duo chirps.

“ _No_ ,” the other four say at once.

“It’ll look bad for all of us if you get caught,” Wu-Fei grumbles into his tea.

“ _If_ ,” Duo says, waggling his eyebrows.

“No more stealing,” Quatre says, reaching up to grip Duo’s shoulder. “If anything, I can call my dad and—“

“ _Quatre_ ,” Trowa says. 

It’s just a name, just two syllables, but in Trowa’s dark baritone it’s a command and a warning all wrapped up in one. He trades glances with Heero. The bruises that ran up Quatre’s side and under his big blue eye had finally faded, and it’d been weeks since they convinced him to leave his parents’ house for the cramped safety of Hilde’s attic.

Heero stares at the steam rising from his own mug, lips pursed.

“Well we can’t eat nothing again,” Duo says. “I’m sick of nothing.”

Heero cocks his head and hums.

“The dumpster behind the main strip,” Duo says. “Can probably find something—“

“Disgusting,” Wu-Fei says. 

“I’ll try the credit card,” Quatre says. “Please, it’s the least I can do.”

They grit their teeth collectively. Quatre’s family credit card had bought the other boys some clothes at the thrift store after they were released from jail, some groceries when Hilde’s between paychecks.

“It’s not ideal,” Trowa says.

“You’d rather go hungry?” Wu-Fei says.

“But where do we go?” Duo says. “It’s not even five.”

Heero smiles, a small, careful tilt of his lips. There’s only one place to go so early in the morning.

~

Catherine wipes the flour from her apron and sets her timer. Five pies in the oven before five, and the diner’s clean and ready for patrons. There isn’t much of a breakfast rush in the off season, just the occasional trucker and, since _the incident_ , a construction crew here or there needing carafes of coffee and her whole inventory of pastries.

The bell rings right as the minute hand crosses twelve, tighter than clockwork. The blonde foreman is a man Catherine could set her watch to. She sets his coffee, cream no sugar, at his place on the bar.

“Good morning,” he says with a dip of his head. 

“Morning, Mil,” she says brightly.

He takes his seat and sweeps his long blonde hair over his shoulder, sipping coffee as she gathers the newspapers fo him.

“I want the highlights today,” she says as she hands them over. “But only if it’s good news.”

“You’re setting yourself up for disappointment,” he says, smooth as silk. 

She smiles and turns to her knives. The place all clean and her favorite regular and the pies in the oven and time enough to sharpen her favorite knives. It’s a good morning, Catherine thinks, peaceful. The slick ring of the blade on her honing steel is cut by the bright jingle of the door. But the color drains from her face and she drops the steel with a clang when she sees the boy with the depthless blue eyes step into the diner.

“Busy morning,” Milliardo hums. He scans the boys as they walk in, one after the other, and long lines of his face go tight with anticipation.

Catherine slips a paring knife into her apron and pastes on a smile.

“Welcome,” she says. “Sit wherever you like.”

The boys trade furtive glances and in so doing pass some secret code. The one with the slim dark eyes tips his head toward the bar, and with an almost military precision, they take up the last five barstools.

“Nice place ya got here,” says the one with the heart-shaped face.

“Something to drink?” she says, eyes lingering on the sullen one with the overlong bangs, looking for signs of—of something.

“Three coffees, two teas, and an orange juice for him,” says the dark-eyed boy, tipping his head toward the blonde.

“Please,” says the blonde gently. “And thank you.”

Catherine serves up the cups and saucers and a pitcher of cream, a shaker of sugar. She watches the boys watch her, watches them watch Milliardo, overcautious and almost jumpy. The vigilance carves incongruous lines in the boyish curves of their faces. There’s something so rough, so hard about them. Nearly mean, suspicious and watchful like the eyes of the old lion in the carnival ring off the boardwalk. Naturally dangerous, with the same native violence, or so it seems to her then.

“Refills on me,” she says.

They thank her with their animal eyes and two or three soft twitches of their mouths that could maybe pass for a smile. But they whisper to one another like school children, heads bent low, trading more of those almost-smiles. The one with the heart-shaped face stirs so much sugar into his coffee that Catherine, despite herself, nearly says something—something like _you’ll rot your teeth, you’ll spoil your appetite, here, have something healthier—_

“How much for a short stack and a side of bacon?” he says, like he’s reading her mind.

“It doesn’t matter,” whispers the blonde. “Just get what you want.”

“Don’t tell him that,” says the dark-eyed boy with the ponytail, “he’ll eat the whole damn store.”

The two quiet ones share a fond smile, controlled and a little bit shy, but a real one nonetheless. _Children,_ Catherine thinks with a sinking feeling, _they’re just children._

“So what can I get you boys?” she says brightly, her earlier fear well subsumed by a need to protect them. 

“I’ll have french toast,” says the boy with the bangs.

“Eggs and rice,” says the one with the ponytail.

“Gimme a hungry man with bacon,” says the one with the heart-shaped face, waggling his eyebrows. “Deluxe.”

“I’ll have the same,” says the one with the depthless blue eyes.

“And you, sweetie?” Catherine says, turning to the timid blonde.

“If it’s not too early,” he says, chewing his lip. “I’ll have the falafel, please.”

It is too early; Catherine doesn’t turn on the deep fryer until noon.

“Coming right up,” she says with a smile, and goes to turn it on anyway.

Milliardo folds his newspapers and sets them aside with a disproportionate grace.

“That article in the Atlantic was a travesty,” he says, angling his keen blue eyes toward the boys.

“It was awful,” says the blonde, suddenly animated. “That they would involve my mother—“

“Tasteless,” Milliardo says. 

The blonde nods. The other four study their hands.

“So you know who we are?” says the one with the heart-shaped face, violet eyes glinting with challenge.

“Clearly,” Milliardo says.

“And you’re not gonna tell us to get lost?”

Milliardo hums and raises his coffee cup.

“If you ask me,” he says, “the Romefellers ruined this town. Turnabout’s fair play.”

“It’s karma,” says the one with the ponytail. “Those bastards—“

“Shut _up_ ,” mumbles the one with the blank blue eyes.

“Hey, hey,” says the one with the heart-shaped face, twirling his braid. “No politics at the table.”

Catherine returns with their plates all stacked on her arms and doles them out with an acrobat’s poise. Milliardo flashes her an incredulous smile, and she lifts a slim finger to her lips. If the portions were a little bit bigger than normal, well, she could trust her faithful regular not to mention it. 

“Thank you,” says the one with the overlong bangs, almost reverent.

“Let me know if there’s anything else I can get you boys,” she says, feeling inordinately fond. She leans against the bar top next to Milliardo and sighs.

“Do you have jobs?” he says, and the question brings the soft din of their utensils to a jarring halt.

The boys look at one another, all silent sentences in the tilt of their heads and the cautious hitch of shoulders.

“No,” says the one with the blue blue eyes, the one from the front page of the Times.

Milliardo cants his head.

“Hm. You do now.”

*

_May 1990 - countdown to opening day_

The construction sites are loud, enough to drown out chittering thoughts and bubbling anxieties. The crew is no-nonsense and the work is hard in a way that leaves the five apprentices ragged tired by the end of the day—tired enough to sleep deeply, maybe for the first time in months. 

The day they get put on heavy equipment, there’s a charge in the air like the pregnant prelude to a summer storm. They’re strong and they’re smart and they’re easy to manage, moodiness aside, and Milliardo sees the potential there. So it’s no surprise to him when the machines seem to hum to life in consonance under their hands, as though they’d been waiting. And he doesn’t miss the looks on their faces when they jump down from the cabins, their coveralls all rolled up to the elbows, slick with sweat—not the sweat of exertion, but of excitement. Something has shifted. Something has changed.

Word spreads quick around town that the boys arrested for the bomb on the boardwalk have become the heart of the crew that’s repairing it. And one by one, the five of them unfold, and they stand up straighter, and they walk with their heads high. Milliardo can’t know what it was like for them, not with the way he was raised—but he has a certain pride, one that he sees reflected in their too-knowing eyes, and he thinks he understands.

“They’re decent kids,” he tells his sister on the phone. “They’re not the monsters the DA would have us think.”

“ _I’m well aware of his politics,”_ she says. “ _He’s in Romefeller’s pocket, after all.”_

“Not that knowing that will change their case,” he says with a frown. 

“ _What’s the over-under on the same financial interests backing both that drug king Kushrenada and that new private prison upstate?”_

Milliardo hums. He’s fairly certain his phone line isn’t bugged, but one can never be too careful.

“I trust you’ll find something interesting in that vein in the documents I’m sending you.”

“ _When can I expect them?”_ she says, voice dampened with worry.

“I’ve sent my partner to deliver it,” he says, flipping through his own notes. Noin will deliver the packet—too sensitive to send over email—to Relena tomorrow. “I‘ve done everything I can, little sister. The rest is up to you.”

*

_November, 1990 - day 1: Bloom, Chang, Maxwell, Winner & Yui vs. The State of New Jersey_

Relena fidgets in her smart heels and pants suit, glad that for once she decided not to paint her nails. She’d have chipped them by now, she’s sure of it. 

The boys are draped and leaning around her office, shifting in their ill-fitting court shoes. Quatre flits between Heero and Trowa, fixing their half-knotted ties. Duo rolls his sleeves up for the fifth time, and Relena lets it go this time. It softens him, which she supposes isn’t bad. Wu-Fei slicks his hair back in the reflection of the fog-frosted window, and suddenly it’s time.

“Have you chosen?” she says, looking to each of them—and Heero last, the de-facto leader of their tight little faction. 

He meets her eyes full-on, and she has to brace herself against the force of it. There’s always been something in his cobalt gaze that struck her (and not only her) with an inexplicable force, invisible and irresistible like the pull of a black hole in the vast emptiness of space. A quasar in the shine off the twilight irises, a meteor, a comet trail’s dark harbinger.

“The truth,” he says, voice firm and flat. 

“But public opinion has improved,” she says, “they’re starting to believe you didn’t do it.”

“But we _did_ ,” Duo says, his smart mouth smiling. “And we’d do it again.”

“In a heartbeat,” Quatre says.

“If anyone tried to flood the town with drugs and guns and contraband again,” Trowa says, standing to his full, intimidating height, “we’d be the first to respond.”

“They’ll call you terrorists,” Relena says, anxiety pricking at the corner of her eyes.

“Someone has to draw the line,” Wu-Fei says. “If law enforcement won’t, if the government won’t—if the government condones it. Well, I guess we’ll have to be terrorists.”

“If somebody’s gotta be the boogeyman, it might as well be us,” Duo says with a dark grin and a toss of his long brown hair. “The shoe fits.”

“You could get life in prison or, or worse,” Relena says, voice wavering.

“Life is cheap,” Heero says with a small, sad smile. “Especially ours.”

“We’re committed to the truth,” Quatre says. “The least we can do is try and bring light to the corruption that got us all here to begin with.”

Relena steadies herself with a long breath in and out, eyes flitting over her notes. She closes her briefcase with a sharp snap. When she looks up to meet their eyes, she doesn’t shy from the brutality held there. Like the circus animals, she thinks, remembering a tiger that jumped sleek and lovely through a flaming hoop. Their’s is the tiger’s strength, coiled and latent, vicious when called upon—to protect, to defend, to survive. Monstrous, but not monsters. Endangered in her territory, given to her to defend.

She smooths down her lapels.

“All right,” she says. “We’ll do it your way.”

They consider her with their animal eyes for a long and pregnant moment, until Heero inclines his head. There’s a softening, a coalescing, a unity teased out of their tense shoulders and tight jaws.

“Well, boys. Shall we go?”

*

_Epilogue - Summer, 1991_

Quatre shields his eyes from the mid-July, mid-day sun. It glints harsh, doubly harsh off the murky green Atlantic, and at the peak of summer hotter than it ever was in Marrakesh. If his family could see him now, they would start a riot, he thinks with a smile.

“Here you go,” he says, handing his customer a shawarma. 

The man thanks him and pays, and as Quatre tucks the money into the cash box of his stand, he catches a flash of red and orange bowling pins in the corner of his eye. 

“Who knew he could juggle,” Duo says, leaning against the shawarma stand. Quatre comes out from behind the grill and they take a moment to watch Trowa in his clown costume, silently pulling peals of laughter from a gathering crowd of children. 

“He’s good with the balloons too,” Quatre says with a soft smile. 

The funhouse music from the ride opposite the stand is interrupted by the rumbling roar of the roller coaster, a ten-car monstrosity painted to look like a Chinese dragon.

“He has all the fun,” Quatre says, squinting at Wu-Fei where he sits in the operator’s booth for the roller coaster. “Him and Heero.”

Duo licks his lips and peers down the boardwalk at the shooting gallery, where Heero’s tacking up balloons and organizing darts. As though he can feel their distant gazes, Heero turns to look at them. Duo flips him the bird with a bright grin.

“You’ll get fired for that if Sally sees you,” Quatre chides, though he can’t help but smile.

“Worth it,” Duo says, his face inordinately fond as Heero raises a finger in reply.

“You decide what you’re going to do come September?” Quatre says. He fights the urge to fix the frayed end of Duo’s braid.

“Hilde’s got me doing that GED test. Maybe take some classes at the community college,” he says with a shrug. “Who knows.”

Duo twirls the baton they gave him when he got promoted to security and fixes Quatre with his bright violet eyes, foxlike as he squints against the sun.

“What about you, space case? What are you gonna do when all this community service is up?”

Quatre chews his lip and scuffs his tennis shoes against the splintered wood of the boardwalk.

“Trowa and I were talking about auditioning for that music school upstate.”

Duo laughs, full with the joy of it, and the sound makes Quatre smile along with him.

“That’s a good idea, man. A real good idea.”

It’s a frail thing, Quatre knows. Frail like those moments that feel so long ago, when they were sudden refugees in a drafty kitchen with only each other’s bony shoulders for comfort (he can still feel the soft weight of Duo’s hair against his fingers, though it’s been months since they moved out of Hilde’s little attic). A new life is growing up around them like the beach grass that creeps through cracks in the concrete, taking wing like the gulls that sweep by overhead. All five of them are looking up for once. The five of them, taking big gulps of salt air and long happy swatches of sunlight, growing trust with a patience beyond their nineteen or so years. It’s frail, that trust, like ice in early-spring, like stained glass; they allow themselves just a few private hopes kept close to their chests against the cold of a world that still regarded them by and large with suspicion and fear. 

But there’s a strength in the frailness that carried them through, one that ran deeper than their collective trauma, slim like a bird’s bones under billowing white wings but harder than steel, a strength alloyed with hope and camaraderie and something inexplicable between them, something almost like family. Something unbreakable.

Quatre smiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> I got the idea for this fic while listening to Bruce Springsteen’s Atlantic City. After all the things they’ve been through, the boys deserve some time at the boardwalk, don’t you think?
> 
> Much love to my very first very big fandom, and all the people therein. And love and gratitude to the Shooting Stars team for all the work they did for us and for the charities that received the zine proceeds!


End file.
